


like learning to breathe again

by bloomsburys



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 04:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7603657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloomsburys/pseuds/bloomsburys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She makes to turn, to leave, and he reaches out, just brushes his fingers across her wrist. “No, wait. Stay.” He grins and the silence feels a little thinner, the darkness a little lighter. “Drink with me.”</p>
<p>Will and Alicia, if Diane hadn't been there to celebrate the end of Will's suspension. The end of 4x01 rewritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like learning to breathe again

She doesn’t enter his office, just hovers in the doorway a moment, champagne bottle in hand.

He’s already nursing a whisky, back to her as he studies the Chicago skyline, and she smiles. She likes this Will, the Will that wears jeans and shirts with no tie and brown brogues. He looks like he did at Georgetown – younger, softer. Hers, somehow.

“Welcome back.”

He turns, sees her standing there with champagne and a smile, and he’s reminded of the end of first semester all over again, drinking cheap wine in his room with the electric radiator on because it’s cold and they’re tired and not feeling like the boisterous company of their classmates after everything.

“I can’t believe you managed six whole months,” she says, because she isn’t really sure what else to say. She hasn’t really planned anything beyond taking him the bottle.

He smiles then and quips, without thinking, “Have you missed me?”

Her breath catches, only briefly. Yes, she misses him.

“We all have.” She sounds much brighter, much more assured than she feels as she moves toward him.

In the few moments it takes her to cross the room, Will studies her. Her back is straight, shoulders squared the way they always are for court, but her smile is soft and she has the same faraway look in her eyes that he remembers from Georgetown, the one that always said she was thinking of something to say, had something to say but didn’t know how, something to ask but a fear of the answer.

He takes the bottle in silence, glances down at the label and then back at her. His gaze holds her suspended. “What are you doing here, Leesh?”

“I – ”

She hesitates, starts again.

“I can go, if you want. I just wanted to give you that, to say welcome back. That’s all.”

She makes to turn, to leave, and he reaches out, just brushes his fingers across her wrist. “No, wait. Stay.” He grins and the silence feels a little thinner, the darkness a little lighter. “Drink with me.”

She stays to drink with him. They talk over the cases he’s missed, the office gossip, old cases, memories from Georgetown. He tells her about his sisters, about the disaster of a novel he tried to write, and at around midway through the bottle they find themselves side by side on his couch, thigh to thigh as Alicia is bent double, laughing at a particularly awful metaphor. She looks up, sparkly eyed and still laughing and oh he wants to kiss her.

So he kisses her. It’s sweet, and soft, and maybe it’s the champagne or the memories or the shirt with no tie or the way he’s kissing her like they’re twenty-one again, but she doesn’t pull away. His hands are in her hair and hers find his chest, fingertips seeking out the warm skin at his throat, fluttering against his shirt buttons, being entirely too demanding as she brings one leg up across his lap to settle them closer. His tongue tastes hers and she moans into his mouth, breathes against the shell of his ear as his lips drop to her neck, her shoulder, one hand slowly teasing her skirt higher.

“Will, I – ”

She sinks against him.

“I slept with Peter,” she whispers, so quietly she’s afraid he hasn’t heard.

Immediately, his expression hardens. The hand on her leg freezes in place, grip tightening to push her away, lips pressed together as he sighs because there is always, always Peter between them.

“No, no, listen.” Her fingertips flutter at his jaw, thumb brushing his lips, trying to soften the line of them, the hard edges of her own words. “It wasn’t right. I thought it would make things right but it didn’t. It wasn’t, he wasn’t…”

She wants to tell him how she had imagined his hands - smaller, defter than Peter’s - against her skin, how she had imagined his body – lighter, more graceful – above hers. His lips, his words, his touch. She wants to tell him the truth, how sleeping with Peter felt like being smothered and how kissing him feels like learning to breathe again. But she’s too ashamed, too scared, so she presses her forehead to his and closes her eyes, willing him not to disappear.

“I’m sorry. I just want you.”

“Alicia.”

He breathes her name, brings his hands up to cradle her face as she opens her eyes. She can feel his pulse against the tips of her fingers and he hasn’t allowed himself to look at her like this since Georgetown. His thumb touches the corner of her mouth, as though trying to nudge it back into a smile.

“Then you have me. You’ve always had me.”

She smiles then, and tilts her head to kiss his thumb, his palm, his wrist as his fingers slip into her hair again.

“You have me too,” she whispers against his skin. “You always will.”


End file.
